Chapter 73 Breakthrough 1

Zhu Shi spoke with absolute certainty, as if he were not speculating, but stating facts he had witnessed firsthand.

As a listener, I was also moved by her attitude and couldn't help but believe her. Even the strange man, who was now nowhere to be found and was on the opposing side, seemed to be stunned and fell silent for a moment.

After a moment of silence, the strange man spoke in a calm and collected voice: "Then, according to you, what is my true ability?"

“It’s ‘damage transfer’,” Zhu Shi answered frankly.

"..." The strange man did not refute.

"Your true ability is the power to transfer the damage you receive to your clones," Zhu Shi continued. "You must have set up many shadow clones in other places. I can't tell exactly how many, but there should be quite a few, right? Whenever you get hurt, you can transfer the damage to your clones."

"This is a superpower that distorts cause and effect and reality. It can be activated by you when you are injured. Even if you die, the superpower will be triggered passively, transferring the fact of death to the clone, while you yourself are restored to a perfectly healthy state."

"The downside is also obvious: the number of your clones is ultimately limited. As an immortal being, this ability, which is easily depleted, is only so-so. Even if you can repeatedly summon clones to take damage for you, if you are placed in an environment with continuous high damage, such as lava, your 'life points' will be reduced precipitously."

"And if your opponent binds you, you won't be able to escape using this ability. As a monster, once captured alive, the source of your power will leave you, triggering your self-destruction. At that point, you won't be able to revive using your vanished ability. Am I right?"

She wasn't saying these things to the weirdo, but to me, so that I could better understand the enemy.

"...How did you know?" the strange man asked after a moment of silence. "If you guessed my ability randomly, I could understand, but how could you see through it to this extent without any clues? Is 'seeing through your opponent' your ability?"

“That’s up to your imagination,” Zhu Shihui said.

"Hmph... Fine, you're all going to die here anyway." The strange man displayed an air of composure as if he were invincible. "Since you can see through my abilities, can you see through the nature of this alternate dimension?"

This time, Zhu Shi fell silent and slowly closed her eyes.

"Anyway, you'll soon realize what this place is. To make you despair sooner, I'll just tell you the answer directly." The strange man laughed, "This is a maze, a maze of infinite size."

"Infinitely large?"

I have an instinctive distrust of this word appearing in reality, and at the same time I release a dozen or so "fireflies" to explore the depths of the corridor at an extremely fast speed.

"This space will never be dispelled before you die; no matter how many centuries you wander within it, you will never reach the boundary." The strange man used two absolutes. "You two must both be the Impermanence of Luoshan, right? This barrier was specifically designed to deal with you Impermanences. How does it feel to treat me as prey, only to be caged by the prey instead?"

“I will sit in the best seats and witness your final humiliation. You will die of thirst and hunger here, and your souls will become my food.”

"—The best seats?" Zhu Shi finally opened her eyes.

She once again revealed that all-seeing gaze. Moreover, the color of her irises had changed. A cool, clear lake-blue light resided in her eyes, radiating a mysterious aura.

What kind of change is this? I was very curious, but it wasn't convenient for me to ask her in front of the enemy.

“You didn’t sit there voluntarily, but you couldn’t leave on your own,” she said slowly. “As this space unfolds, you become one with it.”

"Furthermore, what you just said about this being a space specifically designed to deal with impermanence is also a lie. If it truly existed for this purpose, and it were your own ability, you would have used it from the beginning, instead of only bringing it out after realizing you couldn't escape."

"This space must have been summoned by you using some kind of consumable, and it wasn't originally intended for us... That consumable might not even have been yours. Such a special consumable wouldn't be something someone like you with no background could just casually produce; it was most likely given to you by someone else. Who was that person?"

As she spoke, her personality seemed to undergo a strange change. While the original "Demon Hunter Zhu Shi" had vaguely revealed the temperament of a cold-blooded knight, she now gave the impression of being a warrior devoid of emotion.

"You're quite the talker..." The strange man seemed to be angered by her aggressive demeanor. "It seems you do have some kind of insightful ability... So what? The more you know, the more desperate you'll become."

“That’s right. Before this space is dispelled, I was indeed unable to leave, just like you. But there’s one difference: I’m one with the space, so I don’t need to eat or drink, while you can’t do that.”

"As the price for forcing me to break the agreement with the monster creator, let me enjoy watching you fall into collapse."

"Who created this weirdo?" I asked.

However, the strange man seemed determined to stop speaking, and his voice completely disappeared from the surroundings.

"Monster Maker"... as the name suggests, it should mean "the person who creates monsters." Does this mean that all these monsters were somehow turned into monsters by this so-called Monster Maker? Was Agent Kong one of them?

This is a very important clue; I hadn't heard about it from Lu Youxun or Zhu Shi before. The strange man shouldn't have revealed this information to our faces. This shows that he genuinely believes we are destined to die here.

The cold blue light in Zhu Shi's eyes gradually faded, returning to her usual deep brown eyes.

"I'm sorry, Senior Brother Zhuang, I'm the one who dragged you into this mission." She sighed, then her eyes hardened. "But don't worry, I will definitely get you out of here."

"You don't need to worry about me..."

Actually, I could teleport away from this space right now using the flames left in the real world.

Unfortunately, only I can perform the flame teleportation, so I can't take Zhu Shi with me. If I tell her this, she might overthink things, so perhaps it's better not to. However, in the worst-case scenario, Zhu Shi won't die of thirst or hunger as the strange man suggested. Because I can leave a flame here and bring food and water from the real world back and forth between the two places.

The deadlock described by the strange man was invalid from the start.

Furthermore, the "fireflies" I released also roughly surveyed the surrounding terrain. Indeed, just as the strange man said, this is a maze. Behind every corner of this gray corridor lies another corridor; no matter how far one travels, there's no exit in sight, and the paths frequently branch off. Whether it's truly infinitely large remains to be seen.

Zhu Shi once again revealed a gaze that seemed to see through everything, carefully observing the surrounding space. Perhaps she really did possess the ability to "see through her opponents," and now she seemed to be using this ability again, this time on this very space.

However, she seemed to encounter difficulties very quickly, and her brows furrowed deeply.

And I don't plan to be idle either.

I conjured a fireball in my palm, aimed it forward, and then launched it at a speed far exceeding the speed of sound.

For this fireball, I entered the command "move along one of the walls." I think I saw it online before: in most mazes, if you stick to one wall, you'll eventually find the exit. Although this place might not have an exit, I figured I'd give it a try.

At the same time, I manipulated the flames to shatter the wall next to me, wanting to see what was on the other side.

The result was not entirely unexpected; the other side of the wall remained the same unchanging corridor.

I launched large fireballs upwards and downwards, piercing through the ceiling and floor. I didn't even need to look through the melted holes; I could already sense it from the information transmitted back by the fireballs that had traveled straight in. The corridors above and below were also monotonous and repetitive, and even the corridors above and below were still corridors.

I can feel my heart gradually getting hot.

Although it may be inappropriate to say this, I do have an irrepressible urge to explore this labyrinth full of unknowns.

I really love the concept of "spaces that don't belong to reality." Whether it's the basement of the fifteenth-floor room or the shadowy world Agent Kong showed me, they all fascinate me. And this labyrinthine alternate dimension has also sparked my desire for challenge. That strange man actually said this is a place where there's absolutely no escape, a place with absolutely no boundaries?

So I'll refrain from using the impolite "fire teleportation" trick and try to overcome this "barrier" from the inside!

To be honest, if it weren't for the heavy responsibility of "finding Asahi" weighing on my mind, and the fact that I had companions other than myself by my side, I would have originally wanted to enjoy the battle with the monster with the mindset of a challenger, slowly unraveling the mystery of his superpowers. Instead, I would have had the purposeful mindset of "taking his head first and then talking about everything else" that I had before.

I sensed the location of the fireball I had launched earlier. Based on tests from a long time ago, a fireball I launched seriously in my normal form could easily exceed Mach 4, which is a speed of over 1,300 meters per second. As for how fast it is now, I'm not quite sure myself, but it's definitely very fast.

In just a short while, the fireball had flown an unknown distance, yet the surrounding corridor remained monotonous and repetitive.

Is this place truly infinitely large? Come to think of it, judging from the tone of the strange man's conversation with Zhu Shi, this space was originally intended for some kind of "purpose." Even if it wasn't meant to trap Luo Shan Wuchang, it might have been intended to trap others... If that's the case, isn't the theme of a "maze" a bit strange?

If it were truly an infinitely large space, there would have been no need to use a winding, corridor-like maze in the first place; an infinitely large space is itself an inescapable maze.

I feel like I've found the direction to break through this space together with Zhu Shi.

(End of this chapter)